Two motorcycle gangs were locked in a power struggle over perceived dominance in Texas before a Waco bar fight escalated into a shootout among bikers and police that left nine dead, law-enforcement experts said Monday.

The Bandidos gang had been the leading force among biker gangs in Texas, but another club, the Cossacks, recently had begun challenging them, said Steve Cook, a police detective in Independence, Mo., who heads the Midwest Outlaw Motorcycle Gang Investigators Association—a nongovernmental group of law...

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